Talpidae

The paradox of Theseus' Ship in Greek mythology raises a question of identity: if every plank of a ship is gradually replaced, does it remain the same ship? Rather than asking which ship is the original, the exhibition Talpidae focuses on the act of repair itself. A carpenter removes damaged parts and replaces them with new materials, gradually transforming the ship while attempting to preserve its function. But what happens when the replacement materials no longer allow the ship to sail?

Talpidae connects this process of reconstruction to the practices of Jiyeon Lee and Kyungeun Son. Both artists engage with the idea of an original that becomes increasingly distant through repetition, transformation, and substitution. While Lee reconstructs bodily experiences and memories through painting, Son explores incomplete replication and delegated production through sculpture and performance.

Jiyeon Lee has repeatedly painted rooms drawn from her own experiences. For her, a room is not simply a visual subject but a space deeply intertwined with bodily memory. Through overlapping brushstrokes, shifting colors, and fragmented details, she reconstructs spaces that can never be fully recovered. The resulting paintings do not reproduce memories precisely; instead, their distortions reflect the unstable nature of remembering.

In Dug-out (2026), Lee attempts to depict a ship she has never experienced. Beginning with the exterior of a vessel, the painting gradually transforms into an apartment renovation site, a tunnel, and eventually something resembling a room. The image moves between imagined and remembered spaces, allowing the original form to dissolve through the act of painting.

Her installation Canopy as Sail (2026), made from leftover canvas and lightweight fabrics, stretches across the exhibition space like a membrane. By partially obstructing the viewer's sightline toward Dug-out, it requires physical movement to perceive the painting in its entirety. This movement resembles navigation, connecting the viewer's experience of the exhibition to the metaphor of sailing.

Kyungeun Son works between sculpture and performance, often treating sculptures as objects that retain traces of bodily gestures or function as scores for future actions. In Talpidae, she delegates the production of Shepherd (2026) and Headholerock (2026) to fellow artists Dongheon Shin and Minjin Song. Working between Frankfurt and Seoul, Son explores how instructions, individual gestures, and differences in available materials inevitably create deviations from an imagined original.

Unable to occupy both locations simultaneously, the artist relinquishes direct control over the production process. These differences challenge the authority of the original and become essential conditions of the work. The gestures involved in making the sculptures are subsequently reconsidered as scores for performance.

In Shepherd, hundreds of plaster casts made using latex molds form an irregular, tail-like structure. Rather than producing identical copies, the casting process generates distorted and entangled forms. The latex molds themselves reappear as material in Slinky (2026), shifting from tools of reproduction into independent sculptural elements.

The exhibition also brings together Lee's painting Sprouting Spear (2026) and Son's sculpture Headholerock, whose circular forms evoke Freud's concept of Fort-da, the childhood game of disappearance and return. Through repeated acts of losing and recovering an object, the child confronts absence. Similarly, both artists repeatedly approach an original that remains inaccessible, discovering differences each time it seems to return.

For Lee, painting becomes a process of reconstructing memories that continuously change. For Son, sculpture emerges through the gestures of others and the imperfect repetition of forms. Both practices move away from the authority of a fixed original, embracing the uncertainty produced by substitution and transformation.

Ultimately, Talpidae proposes a different understanding of Theseus' Ship. Rather than preserving an original identity, the act of repairing becomes an ongoing process of dismantling, rebuilding, and transformation. The ship may eventually lose its ability to sail, acquiring an entirely different body. Yet within that transformed structure, a faint memory of what it once was remains.